Mom, nurse acquitted of felony neglect in boy's death

January 20, 2010

A Cook County judge acquitted a mother and a home health care nurse today of felony neglect charges in connection to the death of a severely disabled 13-year-old boy.

In the fifth day of a bench trial, Judge James B. Linn found Kesheia Phillips and nurse Loren Brown not guilty of criminal abuse or neglect of a child causing death in the 2008 death of Jaylen Brown, but did convict Phillips, the boy's mother, of misdemeanor child neglect.

The women and a second nurse were all charged after Jaylen died two months after he was brought to La Rabida Children's Hospital in Chicago. Prosecutors alleged the boy was covered in bedsores under his filthy clothes and suffering from severe malnutrition and sepsis. One of the boy's bedsore, according to prosecutors, went through to the bone.

Prosecutors claimed Phillips, 31, a single mother of three, neglected to take Jaylen to regular doctors appointments and did nothing to prevent her son's rapid deterioration, adding that neither nurse alerted authorities to the mother's neglectful actions.

The second nurse, Morris Lee Brinkley, 75, pleaded guilty last summer to criminal neglect of a disabled person and failing to report neglect or abuse and was sentenced to 2 years of probation and 60 days of community service by Linn.